Small group Photography workshops set in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales National Park

Workshop Report – Aysgarth June 2018

The Spring and the start to the Summer in Yorkshire has been the best since I can remember for a long time. However this was a day that we didn’t particularly want to see much sunshine as our workshop is mostly centred around the many beautiful waterfalls at Aysgarth and West Burton. On our drive first thing in the morning it was looking promising! very little wind and no blue sky in sight! This may sound strange, but from a photographic point of view, diffused light is just what we want!

We meet with the group at the Fox & Hounds in West Burton and begin our day with a session on what makes a great landscape image plus a slideshow of images to demonstrate these aspects. Filled with Tea, Coffee and Biscuits we head out for our day.

Our first stop is a field barn framed by a dry stone wall, trees either side and superb backdrop of the opposite hillside with freshly cut fields (not so good for the hay-fever sufferers). Rather fortunately a few sheep settle down next to the barn and makes for a lovely Yorkshire scene. This is always a good first stop to get the cameras set up and go through the basic exposure settings.

Over the hill and we the drop down to Aysgarth Falls, made famous by the Robin Hood movie with Kevin Costner. We make our way down to the Lower Falls first and due to the very dry Spring/Summer, the falls and water levels are very low and look superb!!! lots of little falls, plenty of exposed rocks and the weather is still relatively overcast, although the sun is starting to burn through the clouds! We spend quite some time here as this is a better location due to the low water levels.

After lunch we head back to the Upper Falls, and although there isn’t much water and the sun has now burnt through the clouds, there are a few opportunities to capture the waterfalls.

We then made our way back down the river for a quick stop in a small patch of woodland to have fun with Intentional Camera Movement. To the passers by, we would look quite mad waving our cameras about! but the results were great! You may have to trust me on that one.

Further down river and we arrive at the widest section of the river, again lots of separate falls, and now we have blue sky behind the line of trees. Due to the suns position, the waterfalls are almost in open shade, so we can still capture images without to much highlight clipping.

Now we head back towards West Burton and cross the meadows towards the village. Darker clouds begin to drift past and we even hear the rumblings of Thunder in the distance. This provides us with some quite eerie light and we have a stop at a field barn surrounded by freshly cut fields that works really well.

Approaching the end of the day we head back to West Burton and our final stop at Cauldron Falls, and they look just stunning. The National Park seemed to have done some felling as it all seemed more open than before and quite a few of the fallen trees from winter had been removed. The falls themselves were just perfect!! low water levels made for a really interesting subject, and the now overcast conditions gave us the perfect light!! A great finish to a great day!! the light was tricky at times, but the low water levels made for some interesting subjects.

We meet up on the following Sunday to go through the processing of the images using Lightroom and Photoshop and the images didn’t disappoint, lots of moving water shots and we also processed some double exposures from the barn.

If you would like to join us on a photography workshop to Aysgarth Falls, click here and learn more about our days out in the Yorkshire Dales.

Post navigation

Featured Workshop

Ribblehead, September

Our Workshops

All of our landscape photography workshops are based on walks at some of the most beautiful locations in the Yorkshire Dales and with two photographers available throughout and a maximum group size of six there’s plenty of time for one to one tuition during the day!